


Detonate

by Write_To_You



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Banter, Bombs, Canon-Typical Violence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Drama, Explosions, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, Protective Illya Kuryakin, Shooting, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29269422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_To_You/pseuds/Write_To_You
Summary: A mission goes south, a bomb goes off, and things get very messy… both literally and figuratively. (Gaby/Illya)
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo & Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin/Gaby Teller, Napoleon Solo & Gaby Teller
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Detonate

The world was dead quiet.

And then it exploded.

Illya flew in one direction across the clearing and Gaby and Napoleon were sent in the other. Gaby landed hard and hit her head, and for a moment she laid there, dazed. 

Then the dust settling around them forced her to sit up, coughing, as it tried to get into her lungs. She pulled the material of her sleeve away from her arm and held it up to her nose, trying to filter the air so she could breath. 

Through the haze, Gaby thought she saw the form of a human lying on the ground. “Napoleon?” she called, voice hoarse.

“Gaby?” Napoleon called back, and she saw his shape push himself off the ground and stumble over to her. “Are you alright?”

Gaby nodded absently and got slowly to her feet, staring around them. Where the ground had once been flat there was now a deep trench, filled with rubbled and stone and the ever-settling dirt. 

She glanced back over at Napoleon, breath catching. 

“Where’s Illya?”

**W / T \ Y**

The mission should have been simple. Those, Gaby was starting to think, were the ones that always went wrong.

There was, as usual, a bomb. It was changing hands between two dealers, headed from the creator to the buyer. Team U.N.C.L.E.’s job was to intercept the bomb during the transaction so that it couldn’t make it to the buyer. The men involved in the exchanged weren’t apart of any political and religious party. They were just in between men, hoping to get paid. Gaby, Napoleon and Illya had been asked to remove the bomb, and stop as many of them as possible. The less people in the bomb transaction market, the better. 

Things started to go bad right away. For starters, there were about half a dozen more thugs overseeing the dealing than they had expected. Then there was the problem of the bomb, which was _much_ bigger (and, presumably, heavier) than any of them had planned for.

They were currently staked out a little ways away from the clearing where the changing-of-hands was supposed to go down. Illya and Napoleon were fighting over the binoculars, but they went suddenly quiet as the pounding of footsteps tuned them into to two thugs coming around the corner.

In seconds, guns were drawn. In the next second, Gaby had been grabbed from behind by a third, unseen man, and something was pressed to her head. 

“Drop gun,” the man who had grabbed her ordered in heavily accented English. “Or I kill.”

“Kill her,” Illya growled, changing the direction of his gun from the original thugs to Gaby’s. “And you will wish you were dead.”

“I give three seconds,” the man snarled, holding Gaby tighter in front of him and cocking his gun. Illya tensed. No one moved. “Three. Two. O-”

There was a suddenly gun shot. Gaby flinched as the man who had grabbed her jolted backward, a bullet through his forehead.

Napoleon had his gun raised. It was still smoking slightly as he turned back to the original two thugs. 

They didn’t know what hit them. One second, they were standing with the upper hand, guns at the ready, and the next Illya had snapped both their necks.

Gaby let out a breath of relief, hurrying back over to her boys. “You are alright?” Illya confirmed, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He did not hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” Gaby assured him, and the three of them crouched back down.

Illya grabbed the binoculars from Napoleon’s limp hand (it seemed that he had won their argument before they had been interrupted) and pointed them towards the clearing. 

“They must have heard the gunshot,” Illya said, huffing out a frustrated breath. He turned on Napoleon. “You could not have found a better way of disposing of him?”

“He had Gaby!” Napoleon protested. “And besides, not everyone can go around snapping necks, Peril.”

Illya rolled his eyes and turned back to the clearing. “Stealth is not going to work anymore,” he reported. “They are coming this way. They know that we are here.”

Gaby let out a sigh and tugged out her own gun. “So we fight our way in?”

“No, no,” Napoleon disagreed quickly. “We don’t know who has the detonator. And besides- a stray bullet could make the whole thing explode.”

“I do not think we have much of a choice, Cowboy,” Illya argued stiffly. “They are coming up the hill. It is either fight or run.”

“Fight it is, then,” Gaby agreed, standing up. “We can at least use a little bit of surprise. I’d rather we find them then they find us.”

Napoleon nodded his agreement and stood up, too. “Peril, you take the left. Gaby and I will go right and we’ll meet at the bomb. Got it?”

“Yes, but how are we getting the bomb _out_?” Illya asked. 

“You’re a big, strong man,” Napoleon told him, smirking. “I’m sure you can carry it.”

Illya grumbled something under his breath in frustration, and the three of them set off around the outskirts of the clearing. As soon as Napoleon thought they were close enough to get to the bomb, he signaled.

The three of them fired their weapons simultaneously, taking the thugs by surprise. They began firing back almost immediately, and everyone dove for cover and the best shooting ground.

The next few minutes were a blur. Bodies were hitting the ground right and left. Gaby, Napoleon and Illya tried to make their way to the bomb, but there were still a couple guards clustered around it. The bomb-transaction team was playing smart.

“We’ve got to take them out,” Gaby said to Napoleon in a low voice as she ducked another bullet. “It’s the only way to get to the bomb.”

“And if you miss?” Napoleon countered. “And that thing goes off?”

He didn’t have a better idea, though, so Gaby raised her arm, squinted, and fired.

A second before the bullet left her gun, one of the thugs shot, too. The bullet grazed Gaby’s shooting arm and her gun slipped. The bullet she fired went sideways and hit the bomb.

For a moment, the world was dead quiet.

And then it exploded.

**W / T \ Y**

“Where is Illya?” Gaby repeated, looking at Napoleon urgently. “Where was he when the bomb when off?”

Napoleon looked grave. “I’m- I’m not sure,” he admitted. “We’ve gotta get through that trench and find him, before someone else does.”

They set off, guns still held at the ready. It was impossible for the men who had been guarding the bomb to still be alive, but there had still been thugs around the perimeter when the explosion had happened. There was still dust everywhere and it was making it hard to see. Napoleon was on edge.

“There’s gotta be a smarter way to do this,” he muttered as the edged around another large chunk of rock, headed towards the deepest part of the trench. 

“Look, I don’t care if we’re being stupid,” Gaby snapped. “We are finding Illya and we are getting out of here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Waverly’s just gonna love that plan,” he mumbled sarcastically, stepping over an exposed root. 

“Well, Waverly can go-“ Gaby broke off and took a deep breath before she could say something she’d regret. “Napoleon, you’re allowed to do what you want. But if it was one of us, Illya wouldn’t stop until he found us, and I’m going to do the same for him.”

Napoleon let out a deep sigh. “Fine,” he relented. “Twenty minutes. But then we have to get out of here. Two lives aren’t worth one.”

_Illya’s is_ , Gaby thought. 

They kept going towards the center of the trench. “Illya,” Gaby hissed, keeping her voice low in the hopes that any remaining bad guys wouldn’t be able to find them by sound. “ _Illya_.”

“He’s not going to be able to hear you,” Napoleon grumbled.

That might have been true, but Gaby needed to do _something_.

Small pebbles shifted underfoot and Napoleon stumbled, his dust-covered dress shoe slipping. Gaby shot out an arm and grabbed his elbow to make sure he didn’t fall. The dust floating in the air got steadily thicker as they reached the deepest part of the explosion site. Gaby took off the scarf adorning her hair and wrapped around her face a sort of make-shift mask, and Napoleon held up his arm to breathe through his sleeve. 

As they neared the center, the rubble was mixed with shards of metal from the bomb and the burning remnants of the thugs’ clothing. A few more steps and Gaby’s foot knocked something solid, but squishy. She looked down and her face scrunched with disgust when she saw it was the charred body of one of the men who’d been standing closest to the bomb. She recoiled and stopped walking.

“We would have seen him if he’d been close enough to the bomb for- for _this_ to happen, right?” She asked uncertainly. “There was no place for him to take cover; he would have been in the wide open.”

“Right,” Napoleon said, sounding much more confident than he looked. “Which means that we only have the entire perimeter of the explosion site to search, and that’s just assuming that Illya hasn’t run off or isn’t looking for _us_ right now. For all we know we’re walking in circles around each other. Or… he’s dead.”

“Don’t,” Gaby said, shutting her eyes against the idea because she couldn’t close her ears to it. “Just… don’t.”

She turned at approximate right angles to the way they’d come into the trench and started walking again. Napoleon grabbed her arm. “We’re _not going to be able to find him_ , Gaby,” he pressed. “Not like this.”

“You can leave at any time, Solo,” she snapped back. “But I will comb every inch of this place until we find him, with or without your help.”

She shook him off and kept walking, eyes skimming the ground for any clue to where Illya had ended up when the bomb had gone off. After a moment she heard footsteps start up behind her again and let out a relieved breath. Regardless of what she’d said, she didn’t actually want to be searching for Illya alone out here. She was used to her partners having her back now and didn’t want to be without that.

The dust was beginning to settle. If Gaby squinted, she thought she could make out a hazy figure a couple yards ahead of her. Her walk slowed, and Napoleon just stopped himself from bumping into her back.

“Friend or foe?” he whispered, eyeing the ominous shape.

“I don’t know,” Gaby replied, voice low. The figure had the stature of Illya, tall and broad-shouldered, but most thugs did. 

One step closer. Then two. Then Gaby saw he was holding a gun.

“ _Get down_!” She hissed, and dove to the ground, taking Napoleon with her. The shot fired right over their heads and Napoleon hissed, scrambling for better cover. Gaby’s scarf fell, dust caught in her nose, and she choked on a breath, unable to hold in a cough.

Another shot. The bullet lodged in a chunk of rock not two feet from her. Gaby rolled, sharp rubble digging into her on all sides. 

Then another dark shape loomed, taller than the first. There was a struggle, a grunt, and then the first man was tossed to the ground. 

Illya Kuryakin emerged from the dust and promptly collapsed. 

**W / T \ Y**

When Illya opened his eyes, they were immediately coated in dust. He squeezed them tightly against the burn, trying to lift his hand to rub at his face, to clean the dirt away.

He couldn’t move. 

Illya froze. Was he bound? Where was he? There was a weight on his legs and arms and halfway up his torso, and the only thing he could move was his neck. 

Tentatively, Illya opened his eyes again. The darkness around him was almost complete, save for a few pinpricks of sunlight. Thick clouds of dust caught the light, shifting like millions of tiny bugs. It would have been beautiful except for the fact that the dust wasn’t just in the beams of light. It was _everywhere_ , still stinging his eyes, coating his nostrils and filtering into his lungs. He coughed, watching the dust shiver with the burst of air before settling in a slow drift again.

Things were starting to come back to him now. Gaby, Napoleon, the bomb going off. He had been close, close enough to be blown back. He must be trapped under the rubble now.

Illya heard footsteps close by, low murmurs of a voice. He was about to call for help when he realized that both the voices were male, deep, and speaking in a foreign language. He froze again, holding his breath to keep himself from inhaling any more dust and coughing. Those were not his partners.

The voices passed on, foot steps fading. Illya released his breath and swallowed, his mouth coated with grime. If the people involved with the bomb transaction were still alive, that meant that Gaby and Napoleon were in danger.

_If_ they’re _still alive_ , a voice in Illya’s head reminded him. He gritted his teeth so hard it made his jaw crack, and forced the idea away. They were alive. They had to be.

With a groan, Illya, tried to push the rubble off of his body. His ribs protested, searing with pain. Illya fell back, panting, but made himself try again. He couldn’t just sit here and wait for the thugs to kill his partners. He _had to get up_.

Illya strained again, pushing through the pain. The rocks shifted an inch, maybe two, before he ran out of breath and had to take a break. His head pounded, the dust blurring into one continual screen of fuzz. 

Then he heard the gunshots. Illya went cold, then hot, then cold again. He knew Napoleon had a gun on him (or had, before the bomb went off), but something in his gut told him that it wasn’t Napoleon who’d fired. 

_Gaby. He had to save Gaby._

With a primal roar, Illya heaved the rubble off of him. His body felt like it’d been smashed with a bulldozer but he pulled himself to his feet, spurned on by another gunshot. It didn’t take him long to see the figure holding the gun, and he knew by the height that he’d been right- it wasn’t Napoleon. 

Illya staggered forward and grabbed the man around the shoulders. He reeled in surprised, smashing his head back against Illya’s face. Illya grunted, then clobbered the man in the head. He went limp, and Illya tossed him aside. 

The dust had settled enough for him to see a few feet in front of him. Gaby was lying on the ground, knees and arms bleeding. He took a step towards her to help her up and make sure she hadn’t been shot, but the world reeled around him. His legs gave out. 

“Illya,” Gaby gasped as Illya hit the ground. She scrambled forward, shaking his shoulder. He groaned. “Illya, come on, wake up.”

Napoleon got to his feet and walked over. “I’ll radio Waverly that we need medical backup,” he said gravely, eyeing his partner. “You did good, Peril.”

“Pleasure- watching you work- cowboy,” Illya wheezed. 

Gaby reached out and gripped his hand. “You’re going to be okay,” she said softly, pressing his dirty fingers to her mouth. Then she leaned forward and pressed his dirty lips to her mouth. Illya tried to lift a hand to her waist but didn’t have the energy, so he carefully bumped his nose against hers. 

Gabby pulled back. “Napoleon’s going to get help. Just rest now, okay?” She smiled, voice wobbling slightly. “I’ve got your back.”

Illya shut his eyes. 

The next few hours were fuzzy. An extraction team arrived at the site of the explosion and Illya was lifted onto a stretcher and carted away. Gaby came with him, and Napoleon reported back to Waverly for a debriefing. They all ended up at the same place- their safe-house, where you’d be just as likely to sit and read a book as you would to get a bullet wound stitched up or get the intel for the newest mission.

The next time Illya was fully awake, he found Napoleon over by the window, peering through the bulletproof glass. Gaby was at his bedside, one hand holding a book open and the other resting on top of his. He moaned, and she looked up sharply.

“Well good morning, sleeping beauty,” Napoleon sassed, grinning. “Or sleeping ugly, I guess I should say. You’re really not looking your best at the moment, Peril.”

“Thank you, cowboy,” Illya groaned sarcastically, pushing himself upwards on the pillows a little. 

Gaby put her small hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy,” she told him sternly. “You’ve got seven broken ribs, Illya.”

His head flopped back and he groaned again, shutting his eyes. “What else?”

“Broken left leg,” Napoleon rattled off. “Sprained left ankle, dislocated kneecap, mild concussion, broken nose, broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder. It could have been a lot worse.”

“ _How_?!” Illya croaked incredulously.

“You could have been killed,” Gaby told him briskly. “You very, very easily could have been killed.”

He reached out and caught at her hand with bandaged fingertips. Gaby stilled and swallowed, and he took in the small cuts scattered across her face and the deep circles under her eyes. “I am all right, Chop Shop Girl,” he told her fondly, lifting her hand with a barely perceptible grimace and pressing it to his lips. “I am all right.”

Napoleon cleared his throat. “In other news, we _were_ semi-successful in our mission,” he said, turning his back on the two unofficial lovers and staring out of the window again. “We don’t have the bomb, no, but no one else does either.”

“And all of the in-between men?” Illya rasped, reluctantly looking away from Gaby and towards Napoleon. “They were taken care of?”

“Well, there were only two left between the shoot-out and the blast,” Napoleon said. “You took care of one and the other turned tail and ran when he saw what you’d done to his partner. We haven’t found him yet, but I doubt he’ll be bothering us anytime soon.”

Satisfied, Illya settled back again his bed and let out a long breath of air. Gaby reached up and stroked a hand across his forehead, smudging the remnants of dirt that still clung to his skin and trying to avoid the scrapes littered across his temple. “Get some rest, Illya,” she told him steadily. “I can’t speak for Napoleon, but I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Hey, I stuck around,” Napoleon huffed, affronted that Gaby would think he’d leave. “I ruined my favorite dress shoes looking for him, you think I’m going to bail now that all I have to do is stand by a window?”

Gaby laughed and Illya wasn’t long in joining in, even though it hurt. After a moment he pulled Gaby’s hand from his forehead, kissed it one more time, and let his fingers intertwine with hers. “You’ll stay with me, Chop Shop Girl?” he confirmed.  
Gaby nodded. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”

**Author's Note:**

> We're not gonna talk about the fact that it took me approximately two years to finish this fanfiction.


End file.
